NASA

Sometime in late August or early September, people living in the corridor between Houston and Galveston, Texas, will be treated to the sight of a perky small biplane passing overhead. It will be painted in the Navy fighter scheme of the late 1930s.

Like most pilots with both civilian and military ratings, Eileen Collins has logged a variety of aircraft types: Cessna 150, Northrop T-38, Cessna T-37, Lockheed C-141, Schweitzer 2-33, and McDonnell Douglas F-4. Despite more than 4,000 hours of flying time in 30 different types of aircraft, the 39-year-old Air Force lieutenant colonel has no trouble singling out the logbook entry of which she is most proud: Date, Feb.

The magnitude of Bob Overmyer's death didn't really hit me until a few days after I attended his funeral in Houston. It was a Sunday afternoon in late March and I sat alone on a hill in a park, flying a kite.

Neil Anderson was 19 and studying for the priesthood at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1953, when a Navy recruiter desperate enough to interview divinity students laid down a challenge. "What do you do?" Anderson asked.

Eating ranks very high on my list of favorite activities, somewhere just below flying and being with the love of my life for the past 36 years. Having had more lectures from NASA dietitians than I care to count, I am well aware of the need to maintain blood-sugar levels when doing stressful flying such as IFR approaches in low weather.

"Oh, what a strange bird is the pelican, his beak can hold more than his belly can." Literature doesn't do justice to the fine flying qualities of the pelican, the scruffy bird of nursery-rhyme fame. The actions of these birds as they filch and pilfer fishermen's bait on the white sand at Cocoa Beach on Florida's Space Coast belie their tremendous flying ability.

The summer of 1982 was full of marked contrasts as I trained for my first space flight. After an intense day of simulator training, I would drive to our local airport and pull the Starduster Too out of the hangar to log an hour of aerobatics.